Motivated reasoning

6 February 2020

While our best science indicates that climate change is exacerbating drought severity and worsening fire conditions, opponents of climate action continue to attack the notion that Australia’s bushfires signal the importance of emissions reductions. What’s going on?

Columnist Van Badham points out that climate deniers have actually shown some intellectual evolution on the issue, as encroaching reality has compelled them to adapt their messaging. First, we saw deniers brazenly dismiss the evidence that the earth’s climate is changing. Later, with bushfires raging at their doors, some deniers found they could no longer contest the reality of a changing climate, but they continued to reject its anthropogenic nature. Others, while recognising human responsibility, latched on to outlandish conspiracy theories – for instance, that the unprecedented bushfires represented an arson epidemic, or a green conspiracy to restrict hazard reduction burns, or a government collusion to land-clear for high-speed rail, or a jihadist terror plot.

And now, as more and more doubters acknowledge the scientific consensus that emissions-fuelled climate change is real, we see conservative commentator Andrew Bolt clutching at straws, insisting that climate change is “overall, a good thing.”

None of these deniers have budged in their conviction that we are morally entitled to continue ‘business as usual’. But their repeated shifts in justification reveal that they are painting themselves into ever tighter corners as they attempt with increasing desperation to confirm their existing beliefs.

Critical thinking expert Peter Ellerton says: “This is a wonderful example of ‘motivated reasoning’, where we justify how we hold onto a world view that’s served us in the past, but as the evidence mounts against it, the attempts to preserve it are becoming more and more disparate and chaotic…That stuff is only shocking if you begin with the assumption that people make decisions based on facts. They don’t. And we seldom have. We’re far more persuaded by narratives than we are by facts. Facts are important, there’s no question about it, but they’re not enough… In a world where so much of it is known, and so little of it by you, it’s comforting to have your own world views massaged by lots of people.”

Given the widespread and powerful influence of corporate interests, institutional systems, cultural norms, and the near-total Murdoch media monopoly buttressing the fossil fuel industry, it’s little wonder that many people cast about for reasons to justify a high-emissions economy and lifestyle. After all, the drive to perpetuate an ideology is often more powerful than the drive to seek truth.

Nowhere was this more evident than on this week’s Q & A program, when Senator Jim Molan tried to defend the legitimacy of his doubts about anthropogenic climate change by appealing to non-scientific opinions. “I respect very much scientific opinion, but every day across my desk comes enough information for me to say that there are other opinions,” he blundered, insisting he was “keeping an open mind”, before climate scientist Michael Mann reminded him not to let his brain fall out. (Molan would do well to consider Bertrand Russell’s injunction “to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation”, which the philosopher claims “is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.”)

Pressed to disclose the nature of the evidence that prompted his doubts, Molan eventually admitted: “I’m not relying on evidence”. The audience was appropriately merciless.

When it comes to vital ethical issues, it’s simply not good enough for any of us to rely on any old plausible-sounding narrative that ‘makes sense’ or ‘seems right’. We need to use – and genuinely value – communally-available evidence, so that we can publicly demonstrate the strength of our arguments, and hold each other accountable.

Crucially, we need to demand these same intellectual standards of our public officials. We must expect them to consider issues of public concern in a framework of alternatives, evidence and reasoned argument. We must require them to integrate and address opposing perspectives. We must insist that they hold their beliefs with a degree of conviction proportional to the evidence. And we must call for them to commit to decisive judgements and definitive action where these are warranted.

If only they would do so, they’d be showing true leadership.

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